


Seventy years

by clokkerfoot



Series: Stevebucky domesticity series [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Crying, Fluff and Angst, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, M/M, Steve Feels, Steve Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 13:02:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5335100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clokkerfoot/pseuds/clokkerfoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve hasn't touched Bucky for over seventy years. They used to touch every day; whether it was arms around shoulders after a battle hard fought, or comfort on the nights Steve felt the weight of war the hardest. Now, Steve feels every single day of separation in the hollow of his chest whenever the name <em>Barnes</em> comes up in a report.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seventy years

Steve hasn't touched Bucky for over seventy years. They used to touch every day; whether it was arms around shoulders after a battle hard fought, or comfort on the nights Steve felt the weight of war the hardest. Now, Steve feels every single day of separation in the hollow of his chest whenever the name _Barnes_ comes up in a report.

Not having Bucky near him hurts more than the cold chill of his grave ever did.

He's learned not to count the times they touched when Bucky was the Winter Soldier. That wasn't Bucky. The Bucky he knows now - the Bucky who hides in Steve’s spare bedroom all day; the Bucky who eats only cereal and loses a pound a week, wasting away into himself - isn't quite Bucky, either, but he carries less hopelessness in his chest.

Now, Bucky hums with regret. His soul - and Steve, if anyone, is attuned to the thrumming of Bucky’s black-and-blue soul - shivers with an ice that even Steve cannot thaw.

But God, does he try. He leaves a glass of hot milk outside Bucky’s door every night before he goes to bed. He collects the empty glass every morning, always making sure to wish Bucky a _good morning_ through the closed door.

Steve bakes bread and cooks pasta and spends half his paycheck on food, catching up on the unrationed culinary world he and Bucky missed out on. He always leaves a plate or a dish or a mug of whatever he’s made outside Bucky’s bedroom, on the table with the framed photograph of the two of them. Steve hopes Bucky will, one day, eat the food Steve makes. He hopes they can, one day, eat a meal together again. He hopes - God, does he hope - that one day they will share a kiss over breakfast, even if it is over the dry cereal Bucky lives on.

Steve knows he cannot rewind time, and he knows that Bucky will never be the same, but he is so starved of the intimacy they once had that Steve can hardly feel the ghosts of Bucky’s fingertips on his skin anymore. He misses waking up to Bucky’s smell all around him. He misses late night kisses and early morning laughter. He misses the feel of his friend’s arms wrapped around him on a cold night, fingers fitting into the gaps between his shallow ribs.

He misses _Bucky_.

-

“Buck?” When there is no reply, Steve knocks on the door again. It echoes a little, with a sort of dull finality. “Hey, Buck? You in there?”

Silence again. Steve follows the path of his breath, watching it puff out in front of him, moonlight illuminating the small cloud. Their house - it is their house, even if they share no part of it together - does not need to be heated. They both spent their time trapped in the ice, artificial or not, and the blood that runs through their veins does not lose heat easily. In winter, the temperature drops low as snow smothers the sun and the frosted moon freezes the ground, but neither Bucky nor Steve feel the cold.

Even so, Steve lies in the middle of his bed at night, shivers wracking his body. No, he is not cold. He knows he's not. He can feel the heat in his palms, behind his knees, between his legs. It is a meaningless heat without Bucky. Even when Steve mourned his friend, in the months after he was pulled from the ice, he still dreamed of Bucky beside him, holding him. The feeling is only worse now Bucky rests a mere six feet away but they exist a hundred miles apart.

When Steve sleeps, his head as close to their shared wall as it can be, he almost imagines Bucky is doing the same. Sometimes he wakes, chilled in the dark of the night, and he imagines he can feel Bucky’s arm around his waist, Bucky’s familiar weight dipping the mattress. Other times, he is shook awake by nightmares, and he can see the shadow of Bucky beside his bed, like a ghost. By the time he reaches over to turn the lamp on, the shadow disappears, and Steve dry-heaves over the side of the mattress until he falls asleep again.

“Bucky?” Steve knocks for the third time, and with every rap of his knuckles on the wood, it feels as though Bucky slips further and further away. “Please talk to me.”

There's a noise from within, and Steve’s breath catches so suddenly that he feels twenty years old and asthmatic again. “Buck? You in there?” Nothing. Steve grits his teeth and lowers his hand. His fists clench at his sides, knuckles white-hot. He wonders if he's really angry with Bucky, or if he's just so sad that he can't express it any other way. Steve desperately wants to break down the door. He knows he should. He knows that Bucky needs Steve as much as Steve needs him.

“I'm always here if you need me. I just want you to know that,” Steve murmurs, reaching out one last time before he gives up and returns to his room, “I know you know that.”

It's late. Steve usually tries to coax Bucky out in the morning, when he tidies up Bucky’s empty glass and brings him a breakfast that will remain untouched. Tonight, Steve woke feeling desperately alone and found himself at Bucky’s door, clad only in a loose t-shirt, before he knew what he was doing. It feels like he is disturbing Bucky, knocking at God-knows-what hour, but Steve knows his friend doesn't sleep anymore.

Steve raises his hand again, presses it palm flat against the wood of the door. The moonlight, streaming in through the window opposite Bucky’s door, shines on his hand. Steve rolls the insides of his cheeks between his molars, his eyes burning. He will not cry.

A breath turns into a dry sob, and Steve feels bile rise in his throat. With his free hand, he covers his mouth, refusing to cry. He will not cry. He will not cry.

Steve whispers Bucky’s name. He loses the end of it to a gasp, his breath caught somewhere between Brooklyn and Austria. He will not cry. He will not cry. He will not cry.

“Steve. I'm here.” Bucky's voice is so quiet, Steve almost doesn't hear it. The sound of it almost shatters his heart.

Steve loses his strength. His legs tremble and he falls. He hardly registers the pain of his kneecaps colliding with the floor. For the first time in over seventy years, he feels numb. When he turns, collapsing with his back to the door, the moonlight blinds him.

He can feel the cold, now. It almost feels like hope.

-

Steve hasn't seen Bucky in weeks. They sit at opposite ends of the same side of the table in briefings. Their eyes do not meet, dancing with humour, across a crowded room. Their arms do not naturally reach for one another. They do not share the same space in the world anymore, even if they do share the same home.

So, when Bucky walks into their kitchen at eight o'clock one Sunday morning, Steve’s only reaction to his friend preparing breakfast is to stare in abject horror.

“Mornin’, Stevie,” Bucky says, his voice quiet, words decades-old. He pulls the carton of milk from the refrigerator, then looks up at Steve. Their eyes meet across the expanse of the room, their gazes hot and cold all at once. Steve has not seen those eyes for many months. Years, really. They are exactly the color they used to be.

He is too shocked to swallow the mouthful of orange juice he has. It dribbles from the corner of his mouth, unattractively. Bucky walks towards him, then wipes the juice away from Steve’s chin with a napkin with a smile. Steve's heart forgets how to beat. He can feel Bucky’s breath on his face, can feel the raw heat of his body. It feels intimately familiar.

And Steve can't stop himself.

He pushes his chair away from the table, and envelops Bucky in a hug. Bucky freezes almost immediately, his atrophied arms stiff at his sides, but Steve holds him steady. Bucky’s smell hasn't changed. He smells like the 40s, like Brooklyn, like late movie nights and walks in the snow, like hospital visits and casts and cigarette smoke, like grave dirt and the first frost, and damn it all to hell, he smells like _home_.

Steve chokes out his name. He allows the tears to fall. He can feel Bucky’s heart pounding, and he's _alive_. Bucky is here, with Steve, and he's _alive_. He hadn't quite been able to believe it before. The masked man on the bridge - that wasn't Bucky. The shadow hidden away in Steve’s spare room - that wasn't Bucky, either.

But this… this is Bucky.

Finally, Bucky moves. Steve feels arms around him. One warm, one cold. He relishes the fingers that dig into his back. He feels no shame when he sobs openly into Bucky’s hair.

“Bucky,” he cries, and he knows he is a snotty, wet mess, knows that the words are muffled, but he refuses to care, “Bucky. You're here. You're here.”

“I'm here,” Bucky replies, his fingertips bunching the material of Steve’s t-shirt, as real and true as the moon, and Steve’s heart sings in response. Seventy years suddenly feels like nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never really written angst, so sorry if this sucked. Similarly: if you're crying right now, sorry.
> 
> Find me on Tumblr [here](http://clokkerfoot.tumblr.com/).


End file.
